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Captain Quincy Allen - "The Outdoor Chums"

Various - "Excellent Women"

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) - "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 6."

Augusta Stevenson - "Children's Classics In Dramatic Form"

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

Citizens

The body of citizens in Carthage, though not expressly restricted, as
in Sparta, to the attitude of passive bystanders in the business of
the state, appears to have had but a very slight amount of practical
influence on it In the elections to the gerusia a system of open
corruption was the rule; in the nomination of a general the people
were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by
proposal on the part of the gerusia; and other questions only went to
the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree.
Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in
Carthage. The powerlessness of the citizens probably in the main
resulted from their political organization; the Carthaginian mess-
associations, which are mentioned in this connection and compared
with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical
management. Mention is made even of a distinction between "burgesses
of the city" and "manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the
latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.

Character of the Government

On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian
constitution appears to have been a government of capitalists, such as
might naturally arise in a burgess-community which had no middle class
of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble
without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand
of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers. The system of
repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the
subjects, by despatching them as tax-assessors and taskwork-overseers
to the dependent communities--that infallible token of a rotten urban
oligarchy--was not wanting in Carthage; Aristotle describes it as the
main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution.
Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in
Carthage either from above or from below. The multitude remained
without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the
governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous
men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of
electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the
rich. A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a
government to emerge; but at the time of the first Punic war it was
still quite powerless. At a later period, partly under the influence
of the defeats which were sustained, its political influence appears
on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the
similar party at the same period in Rome; the popular assemblies began
to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down
the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. After the termination
of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of
Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office
for two consecutive years; and thereby a complete democracy was
introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only
means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so. This
opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm;
but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt
and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared
by well-informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so disorderly
that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless; and it might
well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in
Carthage, the boys helped to make them.

Capital and Its Power in Carthage

From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect
the first place among the states of antiquity. At the time of the
Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony
of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all
the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the
great-king; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world.
The intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry--which, as was
the case subsequently in Rome, generals and statesmen did not disdain
scientifically to practise and to teach--is attested by the agronomic
treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by
the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational
husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also
in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended
to the Italian landholders. A characteristic feature was the close
connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of
capital: it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that
one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage.
The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats,
in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that
time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of
great advantage to the Carthaginians. As these were the instructors
of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so
likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects; by
virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the "best
part of Europe," and of the rich--and in some portions, such as in
Byzacitis and on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive--region
of northern Africa. Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage
as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which
commerce rendered flourishing, brought even in the natural course of
things golden harvests annually to the settlers there; and we have
already indicated how skilfully, by an extensive and evergrowing
system of monopoly, not only all the foreign but also all the inland
commerce of the western Mediterranean, and the whole carrying trade
between the west and east, were more and more concentrated in that
single harbour.

Science and art in Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, seem to have been
mainly dependent on Hellenic influences, but they do not appear to
have been neglected. There was a respectable Phoenician literature;
and on the conquest of the city there were found rich treasures of
art--not created, it is true, in Carthage, but carried off from
Sicilian temples--and considerable libraries. But even intellect
there was in the service of capital; the prominent features of its
literature were chiefly agronomic and geographical treatises, such
as the work of Mago already mentioned and the account by the admiral
Hanno of his voyage along the west coast of Africa, which was
originally deposited publicly in one of the Carthaginian temples, and
which is still extant in a translation. Even the general diffusion of
certain attainments, and particularly of the knowledge of foreign
languages,(9) as to which the Carthage of this epoch probably stood
almost on a level with Rome under the empire, forms an evidence of the
thoroughly practical turn given to Hellenic culture in Carthage. It
is absolutely impossible to form a conception of the mass of capital
accumulated in this London of antiquity, but some notion at least may
be gained of the sources of public revenue from the fact, that, in
spite of the costly system on which Carthage organized its wars and
in spite of the careless and faithless administration of the state
property, the contributions of its subjects and the customs-revenue
completely covered the expenditure, so that no direct taxes were
levied from the citizens; and further, that even after the second
Punic war, when the power of the state was already broken, the current
expenses and the payment to Rome of a yearly instalment of 48,000
pounds could be met, without levying any tax, merely by a somewhat
stricter management of the finances, and fourteen years after the
peace the state proffered immediate payment of the thirty-six
remaining instalments. But it was not merely the sum total of its
revenues that evinced the superiority of the financial administration
at Carthage. The economical principles of a later and more advanced
epoch are found by us in Carthage alone of all the more considerable
states of antiquity. Mention is made of foreign state-loans, and in
the monetary system we find along with gold and silver mention of a
token-money having no intrinsic value--a species of currency not used
elsewhere in antiquity. In fact, if government had resolved itself
into mere mercantile speculation, never would any state have solved
the problem more brilliantly than Carthage.

Comparison between Carthage and Rome
In Their Economy

Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome.
Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art
and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and
altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect
Carthage had made greater progress than Rome. But in Carthage the
moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this
time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while
the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords
and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the
burgesses still tilled their fields in person. The majority of the
population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative; the
majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible
to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for
reform. In Carthage there already prevailed all that opulence which
marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome
still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of
the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome,
they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the
Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver
plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house
to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant
token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.

In Their Constitution

In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in
Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of
police-control. The strict state of dependence in which the governing
board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction
to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language
and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public
interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government
at Rome; but in comparison with the cruel harshness and the absolute
precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-
tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and
reasonable. The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent
capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able
also to trust it, and had no need to fear the magistrates.
The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on a jealous
control of administration by the government, and represented
exclusively the leading families; its essence was mistrust of all
above and below it, and therefore it could neither be confident that
the people would follow whither it led, nor free from the dread of
usurpations on the part of the magistrates. Hence the steady course
of Roman policy, which never receded a step in times of misfortune,
and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or
indifference; whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle
when a last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or
forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed
building to fall to pieces, only to begin it in a few years anew.
Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinarily on a good
understanding with his government; in Carthage he was frequently
at decided feud with his masters at home, and was forced to resist
them by unconstitutional means and to make common cause with the
opposing party of reform.

In the Treatment of Their Subject

Both Carthage and Rome ruled over communities of lineage kindred with
their own, and over numerous others of alien race. But Rome had
received into her citizenship one district after another, and had
rendered it even legally accessible to the Latin communities; Carthage
from the first maintained her exclusiveness, and did not permit the
dependent districts even to cherish a hope of being some day placed
upon an equal footing. Rome granted to the communities of kindred
lineage a share in the fruits of victory, especially in the acquired
domains; and sought, by conferring material advantages on the rich and
noble, to gain over at least a party to her own interest in the other
subject states. Carthage not only retained for herself the produce
of her victories, but even deprived the most privileged cities of
their freedom of trade. Rome, as a rule, did not wholly take away
independence even from the subject communities, and imposed a fixed
tribute on none; Carthage despatched her overseers everywhere, and
loaded even the old-Phoenician cities with a heavy tribute, while her
subject tribes were practically treated as state-slaves. In this way
there was not in the compass of the Carthagino-African state a single
community, with the exception of Utica, that would not have been
politically and materially benefited by the fall of Carthage; in the
Romano-Italic there was not one that had not much more to lose than
to gain in rebelling against a government, which was careful to avoid
injuring material interests, and which never at least by extreme
measures challenged political opposition to conflict. If Carthaginian
statesmen believed that they had attached to the interests of Carthage
her Phoenician subjects by their greater dread of a Libyan revolt
and all the landholders by means of token-money, they transferred
mercantile calculation to a sphere to which it did not apply.
Experience proved that the Roman symmachy, notwithstanding its
seemingly looser bond of connection, kept together against Pyrrhus
like a wall of rock, whereas the Carthaginian fell to pieces like a
gossamer web as soon as a hostile army set foot on African soil. It
was so on the landing of Agathocles and of Regulus, and likewise in
the mercenary war; the spirit that prevailed in Africa is illustrated
by the fact, that the Libyan women voluntarily contributed their
ornaments to the mercenaries for their war against Carthage. In
Sicily alone the Carthaginians appear to have exercised a milder rule,
and to have attained on that account better results. They granted to
their subjects in that quarter comparative freedom in foreign trade,
and allowed them to conduct their internal commerce, probably from the
outset and exclusively, with a metallic currency; far greater freedom
of movement generally was allowed to them than was permitted to the
Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into Carthaginian hands,
their policy would doubtless soon have changed. But that result did
not take place; and so, owing to the well-calculated mildness of the
Carthaginian government and the unhappy distractions of the Sicilian
Greeks, there actually existed in Sicily a party really friendly to
the Phoenicians; for example, even after the island had passed to the
Romans, Philinus of Agrigentum wrote the history of the great war in
a thoroughly Phoenician spirit. Nevertheless on the whole the
Sicilians must, both as subjects and as Hellenes, have been at
least as averse to their Phoenician masters as the Samnites
and Tarentines were to the Romans.

In Finance

In a financial point of view the state revenues of Carthage doubtless
far surpassed those of Rome; but this advantage was partly neutralized
by the facts, that the sources of the Carthaginian revenue--tribute
and customs--dried up far sooner (and just when they were most needed)
than those of Rome, and that the Carthaginian mode of conducting war
was far more costly than the Roman.

In Their Military System

The military resources of the Romans and Carthaginians were very
different, yet in many respects not unequally balanced. The citizens
of Carthage still at the conquest of the city amounted to 700,000,
including women and children,(10) and were probably at least as
numerous at the close of the fifth century; in that century they were
able in case of need to set on foot a burgess-army of 40,000 hoplites.
At the very beginning of the fifth century, Rome had in similar
circumstances sent to the field a burgess-army equally strong;(11)
after the great extensions of the burgess-domain in the course of that
century the number of full burgesses capable of bearing arms must at
least have doubled. But far more than in the number of men capable of
bearing arms, Rome excelled in the effective condition of the burgess-
soldier. Anxious as the Carthaginian government was to induce its
citizens to take part in military service, it could neither furnish
the artisan and the manufacturer with the bodily vigour of the
husbandman, nor overcome the native aversion of the Phoenicians to
warfare. In the fifth century there still fought in the Sicilian
armies a "sacred band" of 2500 Carthaginians as a guard for the
general; in the sixth not a single Carthaginian, officers excepted,
was to be met with in the Carthaginian armies, e. g. in that of Spain.
The Roman farmers, again, took their places not only in the muster-
roll, but also in the field of battle. It was the same with the
cognate races of both communities; while the Latins rendered to
the Romans no less service than their own burgess-troops, the Liby-
phoenicians were as little adapted for war as the Carthaginians, and,
as may easily be supposed, still less desirous of it, and so they too
disappeared from the armies; the towns bound to furnish contingents
presumably redeemed their obligation by a payment of money. In the
Spanish army just mentioned, composed of some 15,000 men, only a
single troop of cavalry of 450 men consisted, and that but partly, of
Liby-phoenicians. The flower of the Carthaginian armies was formed by
the Libyan subjects, whose recruits were capable of being trained
under able officers into good infantry, and whose light cavalry was
unsurpassed in its kind. To these were added the forces of the more
or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of
the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between
allied contingents and mercenary troops; and finally, in case of need,
the hired soldiery enlisted abroad. So far as numbers were concerned,
such an army might without difficulty be raised almost to any desired
strength; and in the ability of its officers, in acquaintance with
arms, and in courage it might be capable of coping with that of Rome.
Not only, however, did a dangerously long interval elapse, in the
event of mercenaries being required, ere they could be got ready,
while the Roman militia was able at any moment to take the field, but
--which was the main matter--there was nothing to keep together the
armies of Carthage but military honour and personal advantage, while
the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common
fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated
his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men
in modern warfare estimate cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful
proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general
Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the
Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the
Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage experienced in full measure
all the evils which armies of fellahs and mercenaries could bring upon
a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous
than her foes.

The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects
of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by
every available means. They insisted on maintaining full chests
and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip
mercenaries. They bestowed great care on those elements which among
the ancients represented the modern artillery--the construction of
machines, in which we find the Carthaginians regularly superior to
the Siceliots, and the use of elephants, after these had superseded in
warfare the earlier war-chariots: in the casemates of Carthage there
were stalls for 300 elephants. They could not venture to fortify the
dependent cities, and were obliged to submit to the occupation of the
towns and villages as well as of the open country by any hostile army
that landed in Africa--a thorough contrast to the state of Italy,
where most of the subject towns had retained their walls, and a
chain of Roman fortresses commanded the whole peninsula. But on the
fortification of the capital they expended all the resources of money
and of art, and on several occasions nothing but the strength of its
walls saved the state; whereas Rome held a political and military
position so secure that it never underwent a formal siege.
Lastly, the main bulwark of the state was their war-marine, on which
they lavished the utmost care. In the building as well as in the
management of vessels the Carthaginians excelled the Greeks; it was at
Carthage that ships were first built of more than three banks of oars,
and the Carthaginian war-vessels, at this period mostly quinqueremes,
were ordinarily better sailors than the Greek; the rowers, all of them
public slaves, who never stirred from the galleys, were excellently
trained, and the captains were expert and fearless. In this respect
Carthage was decidedly superior to the Romans, who, with the few ships
of their Greek allies and still fewer of their own, were unable even
to show themselves in the open sea against the fleet which at that
time without a rival ruled the western Mediterranean.

If, in conclusion, we sum up the results of this comparison of
the resources of the two great powers, the judgment expressed by a
sagacious and impartial Greek is perhaps borne out, that Carthage and
Rome were, when the struggle between them began, on the whole equally
matched. But we cannot omit to add that, while Carthage had put forth
all the efforts of which intellect and wealth were capable to provide
herself with artificial means of attack and defence, she was unable in
any satisfactory way to make up for the fundamental wants of a land
army of her own and of a symmachy resting on a self-supporting basis.
That Rome could only be seriously attacked in Italy, and Carthage only
in Libya, no one could fail to see; as little could any one fail to
perceive that Carthage could not in the long run escape from such
an attack. Fleets were not yet in those times of the infancy of
navigation a permanent heirloom of nations, but could be fitted out
wherever there were trees, iron, and water. It was clear, and had
been several times tested in Africa itself, that even powerful
maritime states were not able to prevent enemies weaker by sea from
landing. When Agathocles had shown the way thither, a Roman general
could follow the same course; and while in Italy the entrance of an
invading army simply began the war, the same event in Libya put an
end to it by converting it into a siege, in which, unless special
accidents should intervene, even the most obstinate and heroic courage
must finally succumb.




Notes for Chapter I


1. II. IV. Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

2. I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes

3. The most precise description of this important class occurs in
the Carthaginian treaty (Polyb. vii. 9), where in contrast to the
Uticenses on the one hand, and to the Libyan subjects on the other,
they are called --ol Karchedonion uparchoi osoi tois autois nomois
chrontai--. Elsewhere they are spoken of as cities allied
(--summachides poleis--, Diod. xx. 10) or tributary (Liv. xxxiv. 62;
Justin, xxii. 7, 3). Their -conubium- with the Carthaginians is
mentioned by Diodorus, xx. 55; the -commercium- is implied in the
"like laws." That the old Phoenician colonies were included among
the Liby-phoenicians, is shown by the designation of Hippo as a
Liby-phoenician city (Liv. xxv. 40); on the other hand as to the
settlements founded from Carthage, for instance, it is said in the
Periplus of Hanno: "the Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail
beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of Liby-phoenicians."
In substance the word "Liby-phoenicians" was used by the Carthaginians
not as a national designation, but as a category of state-law. This
view is quite consistent with the fact that grammatically the name
denotes Phoenicians mingled with Libyans (Liv. xxi. 22, an addition to
the text of Polybius); in reality, at least in the institution of very
exposed colonies, Libyans were frequently associated with Phoenicians
(Diod. xiii. 79; Cic. pro Scauro, 42). The analogy in name and legal
position between the Latins of Rome and the Liby-phoenicians
of Carthage is unmistakable.